Effects of reality tv on teens

Although reality TV is fascinating and full of drama, it still has an enormous effect on today’s youth. Throughout the years reality TV has become popular and it has attracted different age groups. But one group that reality TV attracts would be teens. Now I am not talking about all teens, but some teens do look at the actions of the television stars and think what they’re doing is “amazing”. When teenagers watch reality shows it opens their eyes to a lot of sex, vulgar language, and drugs. Allowing teens to be exposed to this much disapproval behavior is dangerous and can later bring problems later on in life. My best friend younger sister, who is fifteen, is starting to live the life of a reality star. She wakes up early for school, tired, from the previous night. She enjoys staying up all hours of the night just to be able to catch her favorite show, “The Bad Girls Club.” Wanting to be free, and doing whatever she feels like doing. Saying anything she wants to whomever, going out partying with all her friends, open to try drugs (weed), ready to try and have sex. At a young age she wants to do everything like these “bad girls” do. Is it healthy? No, going out every weekend and partying is making her tired. All this “freedom” that she’s getting is making her not want to study for school. But watching these reality shows isn’t healthy for a fifteen year old. According to Mullings “The impact of heavy television viewing and the effects it has on young viewers has been a dominant topic since the 1960s. With the ever-changing landscape of television programming, reality television has become increasingly popular, especially among the pre-teen and teen audiences” (Mullings) Body:

What exactly is reality TV? Well, according to LiveStrong “reality television consists of programs which purport to showcase people appearing as themselves in a variety of different contexts. Many reality programs revolve around competitions; others feature...

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

...the world due to teen pregnancy (Henshaw, 2004). Within the past decade or so, the perception of teenage pregnancy has changed from an act of wrongdoing that is frowned upon to a “fashionable baby bump”. Why has this perception changed? I’d be willing to bet it’s from all of the new reality television shows and movies portraying teen pregnancies and not enough parent involvement.
In the United States, teenage pregnancy has become a common occurrence with three out of ten girls getting pregnant before the age of twenty (Dooley, 2010). Most young teenagers feel as if conception will never come from their scandalous deeds but, in fact, it happens more often than what we think. What is causing teenagers to experiment in consensual sexual activity at such a young age? A sample survey was given to eighth graders in New York community both sexual active and those who abstained. Researchers found that these teenagers engaged in sexual activity due to having used marijuana and being drunk (Little and Rankin, 2001). Another finding is teenagers think consensual sex is a “social craze;” for instance, boys initiate sex to become popular and/or raise their social status and girls have sex to “attain approval” (Little and Rankin, 2001). The survey brings to light that sex education is not the only thing necessary to combat teen pregnancy, but also alcohol and drug abuse education.
I am not only pointing a finger at MTV but...

...the effects of realityTV on society. Positive and negative effects of realityTV are two parts of a coin. Unfortunately the coin mostly falls on the negative side. Many realityTV shows are created purely for profit without thinking about its consequences on the mindsets of viewers, especially young viewers . Media companies accept that they make these shows for profit and they do not care about the effects on people. They say that they just show us what we want. Is it right not to care about the viewers mental health just to make more money? Most of these shows do not portray reality and this weakens the ability of critical thinking, causes to depict a ''false image of life'', develops wrong notions, erodes some ethical and moral practices.
RealityTV shows give a false image of reality, since the people watching them are under the impression that everything happening in the show is real. According to a Time magazine article, some realityTV shows are edited to be dramatic and some quotes may actually be manufactured. Clashes and ugly feuds between the...

...world were information is king. The technology world as brought the world to our feet by just a click of the button. We are now surrounded by virtual worlds and realityTV. The question is has this brought us to a place were our reality is now blurred? We live in a world were we are surrounded by the mass media portraying air brushed woman, attractive guys, perfect families etc this is in our faces so much that we start to think that this is who we should be and how we should act, the norm of life if you want. The distinction between real life and life represented by the mass media gets blurred and all sense of reality is lost.
Reality television is a relatively new trend that took the television world by storm. Viewers cannot seem to get enough of the torture, embarrassment, temptation, and above all, drama of other regular, everyday people being placed in unrealistic settings and manipulated for the world to see.
Although a relatively new trend, it has shown enormous growth and it seems that every second day a new more outrageous reality show is aired.
We are plagued with horrible pictures and gruesome stories of violence and terror every day when turning on the TV, we will take a look at the effect this have on us.
In this assignment we take a look at things like “does shows like real TV blur our reality”. I will attempt...

...Outline:
Research Paper: RealityTV and its influence on the younger generation
I. Introduction
A. Media has a huge impact on how people truly see themselves, particularly in women and young female teens. Reality television has made the standards of beauty quite high these days and there is a definite change in society’s view on what is truly beautiful. Turning off the TV has simply become too hard when it comes to realityTV shows
1. Turning into their favorite movie star is becoming more normal than ever. Skipping meals to look like the girl on the cover of the magazine keeps many people wandering what other lengths girls will go to to look like someone else.
2. These realityTV shows are gruesome and harmful to one when they say, "Reality television is a relatively new fad in America that is sweeping the networks’ ratings and redefining programming altogether. Viewers cannot seem to get enough of the torture, embarrassment, temptation, and above all, drama of other regular, everyday people being placed in unrealistic settings and manipulated for the world to see"(Pontius). Leaving an everlasting affect, these shows do a lot of damage.
B. Children consider makeup a necessity at a younger age. RealityTV has caused an obsession that is unavoidable. It is a crude form of...

...﻿Sydney Schumann
Mrs. Taube
English 11
16 April 2014
Teens and Marijuana
According to a 2012 Monitoring the Future study, marijuana is the illicit drug most likely to be used by teens (Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey). Marijuana comes from the plant Cannabis Sativa and appears as a green/brown mix of flowers, stems, and leaves (Teens Health 1). Marijuana is also known as pot, weed, MJ, Mary Jane, reefer, dope, ganja, herb, and grass. Marijuana is most often smoked in cigarettes, hollowed-out cigars, pipes, or water pipes, but is sometimes mixed into food or tea (1). Why are there concerns about teen use of marijuana? During adolescence, many developmental changes are occurring and poor choices could affect a teen’s future (University of Washington ADAI). As a result of teen marijuana use, teens engage in problematic behavior, neglect their education, and risk their health.
Problematic behavior remains an effect of teen marijuana use. “A 2008 longitudinal study of heavy cannabis users from ages 14 to 25 in a New Zealand birth cohort found that increasing cannabis use in late adolescence and early adulthood is associated with a range of adverse outcomes in later life” (University of Washington ADAI). Ashbridge found that there is an increased risk of driving, a doubled risk of being in an accident, under the influence of marijuana (qtd. In U of W...

...Reality Shows: Their Effect on American Teens
Martha Wallace
ENG 122: English Composition II
Professor Kathy Conner
August 8, 2011
Reality Shows: Their Effect on American Teens
The values of our forefathers for America have disappeared. Each year more and more of American children are judging themselves based upon the lives portrayed in popular media. Certain media in the music industry portrays the life of getting rich fast and having a lot of girls. Movies depict a life of fast cars, many sexual partners, and dishonesty. The latest media that has become very popular in portraying negative values is reality shows. Reality shows have replaced traditional family values shows such as: Happy Days, Seventh Heaven, The Cosby Show, Family Matters, and Growing Pains. Today’s family values are now being portrayed through shows like: Keeping up with the Kardashians, Teen Moms, The Real World, Jersey Shore, and all of the Real Housewives shows. Reality shows have changed the way American teens view family and the values of marriage, honesty, and respect.
Today’s teenagers view marriage as a commitment between two people who are in love. Once the love is gone, the marriage is over. On the other hand, some adults may think differently. Marriage is not just the result from love between two people. There is much more to...

...Kenneth Nevling
Professor Whitworth
ENG 114: First draft- RealityTV
07 November, 2010
RealityTV and It’s Effect on Society
A realityTV show stars a non-celebrity or a volunteer who wants to participate in the program. The core role is to see what their reactions in certain scenarios are, and how they face given situations. The audience feels like they have a connection with the show’s stars as they feel that they are real and normal people representing them. Viewers are then entertained by the sadness, depression, frustration, and emptiness that the reality stars will express in the show. Audiences cannot seem to get enough of the drama of other regular, everyday people placed in unrealistic settings manipulated for the world to see. Overtime, exposure to these shows will subtly cultivate viewer’s perception of reality. Reality television shows have a negative influence on today’s society by portraying a false sense of communal experience, creating unrealistic standards of living, as well as affecting the productivity of growth to the younger generation.
If television was all that was important to our existence then we would be very well off. Marketing and production for realityTV shows are much less costly than it would be to pay for a whole set and professional actors/actresses. James...

... Reality shows
What
RealityTV shows can be classified as a genre of TV shows presenting unscripted humorous dramatic or purportedly unscripted and upstaged matter in front of the audience. These realityTV shows usually feature ordinary people in unordinary situations. These reality shows also show celebrities that act as an aid in raising the TRPs of the shows.
For many years, the television industry favored scripted television programs over the unpredictable and potentially litigious reality show form.
A television reality show features talent culled from the ranks of 'ordinary' people, not professionally trained actors.
Subjects of a reality show may be given some rudimentary directions off-screen, but the point is to allow the performers to act and react as normally as possible. A reality show is not to be confused with a documentary, in which the subjects are asked to ignore the cameras and behave naturally.
TrPs
TV industry is capital-intensive and needs money over a period of time to break even. Besides so many players in the field can only mean a race for the TRPs and eking out the extra revenue.
In such a scenario, the channels will do what is required to get the TRPs as quickly as possible. Therefore, they will go for themes that will capture mass appeal....